Research Details

Abstract

Semantics, or meaning expressed through language, provides indirect access to an underlying level of conceptual structure. To what degree this conceptual structure is universal or is due to properties of cultural histories, or to the environment inhabited by a speech community, is still controversial. Meaning is notoriously difficult to measure, let alone parameterize, for quantitative comparative studies. Using cross-linguistic dictionaries across languages carefully selected as an unbiased sample reflecting the diversity of human languages, we provide an empirical measure of semantic relatedness between concepts. Our analysis uncovers a universal structure underlying the sampled vocabulary across language groups independent of their phylogenetic relations, their speakers’ culture, and geographic environment.

Type

Article

Author(s)

Hyejin Youn, Eric Smith, Christopher Moore, Logan Sutton, Jon Wilkins, Ian Maddieson, William Croft, Tanmoy Bhattacharya

Date Published

2016

Citations

Youn, Hyejin, Eric Smith, Christopher Moore, Logan Sutton, Jon Wilkins, Ian Maddieson, William Croft, and Tanmoy Bhattacharya. 2016. On universal structure of human lexical semantics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.(7): 1766-1771.